Recommended reading - what books would be confiscated from your house?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

Am slack jawed reading about the police removing a book from a woman's home which she believes was to "check" her thinking.

It gave me pause to look at my own bolshy bookshelf with scribbles of sedition.

What books have you read that some might consider "problematic" but which you found particularly helpful, interesting or challenging and which maybe led you to these boards?

Jenni's book is by Heather Brunskell Evans, I think it might be this one:
www.filia.org.uk/latest-news/2020/11/27/book-review-transgender-body-politics-by-heather-brunskell-evans

I'd recommend Kathleen Stock, of course
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/material-girls-by-kathleen-stock-review-bkqxckqqr

Helen Joyce, this is the one that every MP was sent.
www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/trans-when-ideology-meets-reality-helen-joyce-review-b944183.html

Milli Hill - not about trans but about obstetric violence
(presumably this was reviewed before Milli said she thought that sex is a thing)
www.aims.org.uk/journal/item/give-birth-like-a-feminist-review

Maya Dusenbery's "Doing Harm" is a few years old and there are other versions by other authors examining medical misogyny, but, this is my favourite of them
therumpus.net/2018/04/doing-harm-by-maya-dusenbery/

Inferior by Angela Saini is similar but looks at the sciences in general
www.chemistryworld.com/review/inferior-how-science-got-women-wrong-and-the-new-research-thats-rewriting-the-story-/3008048.article

Who cooked Adam Smith's dinner by Katrine Marcal is a feminist critique of economics wbg.org.uk/blog/who-cooked-adam-smiths-dinner-a-review/

In Control by Jane Monckton Smith is about predictors for male violence which end in the murder of women www.college.police.uk/article/dangerous-relationships-and-how-they-end-book-review

The Mental Load by Emma (no surname) is a cartoon book about who does what in a home and why www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

The trouble with women by Jackie Fleming is hilarious and beautifully illustrated. www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/16/the-trouble-with-women-jacky-fleming-feminist-cartoons

There are others. If the police wish to remove my books I will expect a receipt and for them to be returned to me. Although, if they were a bit dog eared by the time I got them back because they'd been quietly shared round the stations, well, that would please me enormously.

For balance, I have read Juno Dawson, Shon Faye and have attempted Alok Vaid-Menon's three times now...honestly, I know you don't get as much time to read as you'd like, so I recommend saving those treasures until after you have read and reflected all of the books on your "oh, that looks interesting" list.

I have The Freedom Fallacy (multiple authors), Jessa Crispin, Caroline Criado Perez, Finn Mackay, Kate Manne, Gerder Lerner, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Cordelia Fine (several), Germaine Greer, Helen Joyce and loads more on the kindle which is MIA at the moment.

I'd only read a couple of these before I found FWR just over 4 years ago. You lot are a bad influence

Not to mention everything by Robert Galbraith.

Let's not talk about the stickers and hateful haberdashery.

Women who run with the wolves, The Crucible and my works of Deborah Cameron, all definitely going to land me in the clink for having ideas above my station and encouraging the whole saying no to male people thing. I'm also starting to eye up the cat who would definitely dob me in as my familiar for a few Dreamies.

Not technically a book but I have every issue of Radical Notion which must mark me as a Dangerous Woman...

We've got all the Harry Potter books, and clearly read multiple times so I guess that's straight to the gulag.

I've got Material Girls on my kindle, do you think the police know about kindles? Just wondering as they seem to think it's the 1950s still ...

Oh crap, I've got some issues of the Radical Notion too. I'll hide them under some hard core porn mags - the police won't care about those - phew.

Don't have a bookshelf, I read everything on my Kindle.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Material Girls by Dr Stock
Transnby Helen Joyce
And because I wanted to read something on "the other side", The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye.

I also read a lot of historical books. Currently having a go at Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich 1945-1955 by Harald Jähner.

All in all, I think I should be put away for decades.

Oh, and Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. I was very disappointed with the recent series, so am going back to the original text.

More: Pride and Prejudice by Austen
War and Peace by Tolstoy (I skipped the war bits)
All the Strike books. A very bad influence.
Jews don't count by David Baddiel. Jesus, I'm going to hell.

1984
so they can perfect their techniques

The terribly predictable [include] A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman & books by J K Rowling in a few languages.

I don’t think some of my heftier books like Lucy Moore’s Liberty would be approved of either. Jane Robinson’s Bluestockings (& everything else on the education of women) would be gone. Anne Lister’s diary? Perhaps if I swore on it that (all evidence & good practice to the contrary) she was in fact a trans man I’d be allowed to keep it?

Anything by Mill or Bentham is out one assumes. And not in a strongly-argued anti-utilitarian down-with-this “Philosophy Of Swine” way. (Bet Bentham wishes he were safely in his grave now. Not surrounded by students so self-absorbed they don’t notice a man who died in 1832 is in a meeting with them).

@FOJN

I have The Freedom Fallacy (multiple authors), Jessa Crispin, Caroline Criado Perez, Finn Mackay, Kate Manne, Gerder Lerner, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Cordelia Fine (several), Germaine Greer, Helen Joyce and loads more on the kindle which is MIA at the moment.

I'd only read a couple of these before I found FWR just over 4 years ago. You lot are a bad influence

Not to mention everything by Robert Galbraith.

Let's not talk about the stickers and hateful haberdashery.

I really think we should call it harmless habdashery.

Maybe just having books will be enough. It's too dangerous to allow women to read. They might get ideas.

Dunno but I’m sure many would have ‘warnings’ attached. That’s what comes of a household of bookworms, collectors and English grads. Oh dear - people reason books? Whatever next?

All my Harry Potter and Strike books surely?

Who would have guessed that my copy of Mein Kampf would one day be less controversial than a kid's book about a school for wizards 🤷

I have The Second Sex next to A Room of Ones Own next to my Strike collection on the shelf....

All of your books will be evidence because they will all mention women and the implication will be that women means sex not gender.

I've just been out and burned The Curious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. Never read the bloody thing but the title will be seen as ambiguous

I have the style guides from several science publishers, pre-Stonewalling. Nearly all day something along the lines of ‘For social and psychological studies, use gender; for biological and medical studies, the relevant term is sex.’

I’m doomed.

@highame

All of your books will be evidence because they will all mention women and the implication will be that women means sex not gender.

I've just been out and burned The Curious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. Never read the bloody thing but the title will be seen as ambiguous

Oh, they've got us now - could there be anything more 1984 than getting us to where we've internalised the terror so much that we burn our own books?

Well done , Gwent Police, job done...!

A lot of the books mentioned above, plus radical notions and posters, stickers and artwork from Jess, a feminist rage poster in a frame, mugs and bags with feminist slogans on. Oh dear. The house must be lit up on the heretic map.

Thankfully I borrowed it from the library a while ago so it’s not still in my possession because The Grace Year somehow managed to be published in 2019, despite being dystopian fiction where the society being described is ultra-misogynistic & the protagonist recognises this...

They could start the righteous inferno with lots of Adult Human Female T shirts, I expect. All printed matter, innit? Although what they'd do with my reverently preserved Playing With A Different Sex Au Pairs' T shirt (free iron-on transfer came with the album) I can't think - is it Gender Critical or Transphobic?

What do you think, boys women and girls?

Bugger. Trans Righteous, not Transphobic..

I have lots of books on horse/ livestock veterinary care and breeding, obviously transphobic as they refer to only two sexes and know which is which.
Dd1 is doing a zoology degree,which deals with genes, chromosomes, reproduction ect. Her books and materials are very transphobic as again,they teach biological truth,not woo woo feelz.
Let the burning commence!

@chilling19

A lot of the books mentioned above, plus radical notions and posters, stickers and artwork from Jess, a feminist rage poster in a frame, mugs and bags with feminist slogans on. Oh dear. The house must be lit up on the heretic map.

I'd overlooked my Sex Matters paraphenalia…

And my FiLiA stuff, including the banner and Wrong Side of History teatowels.

www.filia.org.uk/filia-shop/wrong-side-of-history-my-arse-courage-calls-to-courage

I've got a model clitoris on my bookshelf.

Is that an automatic penalty of "strip search and slagging off of saggy tits and hairy everything"?

Because I could try and hide it. I think I could blu tac it over my actual clitoris.